How to buy a glider affordably - redux

Andy Blackburn wrote:
At 08:18 29 October 2006, Tony wrote:
yea no kidding, the original post had nothing to do
with gliders. he
was trying to work some stock or money market system
or something.
most of those schreders are going for 3-4 times what
i payed for my
cherokee with an enclosed trailer. just remember,
if youve got enough
glider to make it back to the airport, you probably
could have gone at
least a third longer distance if you wouldve just kept
going downwind!

i bought my glider to avoid having to share gliders
with people (a'la
club) call me selfish but i like having my own ship
to go cross
country when and where i want. Ill keep a partner
in bed and that is
all.


You guys need to read more than the subject line...

My post referred back to a post a year ago where someone
asked if he had a new glider on order with a delivery
a year out what was the best thing to do with his money.

It ended up in a bet between a few of us and Tom Seim
who made a prediction about the performance of the
Fidelity ContraFund versus the broad market and Euro/$
exchange rates. His suggestion was to keep you money
in dollars and invest in the ContraFund. Turned out
to be bad advice. My post was to close the loop on
that bet.

Andy,

You better go back and reread your post yourself. There was never any
mention of a "bet". Quite the contrary, I commented on your complete
lack of any recommendations whatsoever. The only thing you recommended
was to (maybe) order the glider and take a currency hedge position,
which will be useless to your average investor. Mainly, you criticized
mutual fund newsletters, but offered up no alternative.

Go back to Nov 15, 2004 and reread my ORIGINAL post:

Yes, invest your money and wait. For instance, if you put your money
in a high quality mutual fund you will begin accumulating principal.
Take your $70,000 and put in a Morningstar 5-star fund (i.e. Fidelity
Contrafund). If you average 15% return the numbers a
Year Amount
0 $70000
1 80500
2 92575
3 106461
4 122430
5 140795
6 161914
etc.

At some point the price of the glider, converted from euros, is going
to be less than your investment. BUY THE GLIDER! This is, simply, the
power of compounded interest.


Don't agree with my numbers? Then put your damn money into a mattress
and see what happens!

--------------

Since then (Nov 2004) the ContraFund has gained 35% vs 22% for the S&P
500. This is a compound rate of return over 16%. Personally, I am VERY
pleased with that performance. If you left it in 3 month Tresury bills
(the present day version of the matress) you might have gottern 8%.
The Euro has dropped from 1.2933 to 1.273 in the same period (despite
one prediction on RAS that it would go to 1.35!). So the advice was
excellent by any reasonable measure. Picking apart performance
differences over a short time period (6 months) demonstrates an
appalling lack of understanding on how markets work. This is, indeed,
very bad advice.

Tom